The
Republican Party appears to consider military action to be the first
choice in
dealing with international difficulties.

The
current
leadership
of the Republican Party apparently considers
military action
to be the primary option for dealing with international problems. The
best
example remains the Iraq War that began in 2003. But it gets worse than
this.
The leaders of the Republican Party at that time parasitized American
patriotism as a way of getting support for an opportunity to enrich
military
contractors. That is, the main purpose of the war was not war, but
money. Here
is a brief summary of the story.

After
the
9-11
attacks, nearly all Americans were shocked into the
realization that
the world was a dangerous place for them; they had previously assumed
that our
nation was invincible. The 9-11
Commission concluded
that the Bush Administration had underestimated credible threats of
terrorist attacks, as had the Clinton Administration, preoccupied as it
was with
the Republican-led impeachment attempt. The Commission concluded that
American
lack of readiness was due to a “failure of the imagination.”

But
immediately
after
9-11, nearly the entire country was united, ready to
work
together—a rare moment in which individual greed was laid aside.
Congressional
Democrats were ready to support Bush. It is unclear whether
Congressional
Republicans would, if such an attack were to occur again, support
President
Obama as much or at all. Here was an opportunity in which Bush could
have
called on Americans to work together for a stronger country. Here was
an
opportunity to pursue energy efficiency, to lessen our dependence on Middle East oil. Americans were ready to work
together.

But
the
Bush
Administration immediately saw 9-11 as an opportunity to
promote an
American Empire, the very thing that terrorists accuse us of doing, and
which
allows terrorists to recruit more terrorists or a support base for
supplies. Leading
Republicans immediately saw the 9-11 attacks as an opportunity to
invade Iraq.
In
fact,
according
to former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, the Bush leadership had been
planning an Iraq
invasion from almost
the
first day that Bush took office.

As
is
now
well known, but which younger readers of this website may not
remember,
the Bush Administration used false information to begin the Iraq War.
First,
Bush immediately began linking Iraq
with Al Qaeda at every speaking opportunity, when in fact no such link
existed.
This was a deliberate and cynical attempt to funnel Americans’ 9-11
fervor
against Iraq.
Second,
the
Bush
Administration claimed that they had irrefutable evidence that
Iraq was attempting to obtain “yellowcake” uranium
from Niger.
They
made
the
false claim that Iraq
had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and were ready to use them very,
very
soon. When Ambassador Joseph Wilson later reported that there was no
such
evidence, the Bush Administration leaked the identity
of his wife as a
CIA
operative, thus putting her safety at risk.
With
this information and sweeping claims upon patriotism, the Bush
Administration convinced even many Congressional Democrats to give him
an
authorization for military action in 2003.

It
is
clear
that the Bush Administration was parasitizing the zeal of the
American
people in support of this war. The name they chose for it—Operation
Infinite
Justice—clearly had blasphemous overtones, implying that God Himself
demanded
this war. Bush is reported to have said, “We’re an empire now, and when
we act,
we create our own reality.” This quote, reported
by Ron Suskind,
has
not been disputed.

It
is
also
clear that the Republican leadership created an environment of
hostility, rather than trying to bring people and nations together, in
response
to the terrorist attacks. Republican pundits fanned the flames of
hatred
against anyone who criticized the Iraq War (most famously the Dixie
Chicks) and
against any American allies who were not in full enthusiastic support
of the
war (most famously France). What did Ohio Republican congressman Ney
think was
the kind of response that Americans should take at this time? Rather
than to
promote dialogue with France,
his solution was to get the Congressional cafeteria to rename
French
fries
“Freedom Fries.” (Ney
later resigned as part of the Abramoff scandal.)

It
is
also
clear that the Bush Administration did not think their strategy
through
for how to conclude, or even win, the war. Deputy Defense Secretary
Paul
Wolfowitz claimed that all our soldiers had to do was to drive tanks
into Baghdad
and they would be
greeted by
people throwing flowers.
He
estimated the total cost of the war as just a few hundred million
dollars.
As a reward for his prediction that the Iraq War would be a great
investment,
Wolfowitz then became president of the World Bank. In reality, the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan
(the former requiring
the lion’s share of expenses) continue to cost $250 million a day.

The
Bush
Administration
did not want to make the argument to the American
people
that “We are invading Iraq
because it will be a great investment.” Instead, they had to, as noted
above,
use false information about international threats from Iraq.
The
reason that the Bush Administration thought that the Iraq War would be
a great
investment is, of course, oil. Iraq
has a lot of oil. Here is direct evidence. First, a secret high-level
Bush
Administration meeting (the “Energy Task Force”)
took
place
long before 9-11; all we know about this meeting is that it was
centered around a map of Iraqi oil fields. Second, as soon as American
troops
(with a few troops from other countries) rolled into Baghdad, the
first thing they did was to
secure the Oil Ministry headquarters. They seemed to have much less
interest in
anything else; looting was rampant, including of ancient Babylonian
artifacts,
and there was no attempt
to stop it.

But
oil
was
only part of the monetary reason for the Iraq War. Perhaps an
even
bigger reason was federal government money for contractors. The biggest
contracts were immediately given to Halliburton, a corporation
previously
headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. Halliburton took the money, and
provided
marginally
competent
services in return.
At
one point, a Halliburton subsidiary was piping polluted water right out
of
the river for the soldiers to use. They also charged the American
taxpayers
almost $100 per load of laundry, even when the soldiers offered to do
the
laundry themselves.

In
July
2010,
a report from the Special Inspector
General for Iraq
Reconstruction
reported
that the use of Iraqi oil money, which had been going into a special
fund, could not be accounted for between 2004 and 2007. To what extent
the
provisional Iraqi government, and to what extent the American occupiers
were
responsible, for this disappearing cash is unclear, but this was during
the
time before Americans had put the Iraqi government back in charge of
normal
operations.

Furthermore,
the
Bush
Administration
detained hundreds of men of Arabic descent and
subjected them to torture. They claimed that “enhanced
interrogation
techniques”
were
necessary in order to obtain important security information. However,
most
observers, cannot believe this, for the following reasons. First, it is
well
known that testimony obtained under torture is not reliable. The victim
says
whatever he or she thinks will cause the pain to stop. I would admit to
being a
secret agent from Mars if it would make them stop torturing me. The
deliberate
mental manipulation, brought on by physical torture, may also create
false
memories. Torture, therefore, is a deliberate manufacture of
corroboration for
possibly false theories. And possibly not. That’s part of the
problem—the United
States
gets unreliable intelligence information as a result of criminal acts
of
torture. Second, much of the torture was clearly intended as ghoulish
entertainment, most famously at Abu
Ghraib
prison in Baghdad.
Here
is
an
excerpt from testimony from one of the Iraqi detainees, published
by
the Washington
Post:

“Do
you pray to Allah?” one asked. I said yes. They said, “[Expletive] you.
And
[expletive] him.” One of them said, “You are not getting out of here
health[y],
you are getting out of here handicapped. And he said to me, “Are you
married?”
I said, “Yes.” They said, “If your wife saw you like this, she will be
disappointed.” One of them said, “But if I saw her now she would not be
disappointed now because I would rape her.”

The
United States
government blamed everything on the two soldiers whose images
frequently
appeared in the photos, but this abuse could never have happened
without a
military environment and training that encouraged torture games. For United States security, the worst
result of this
episode and others like it is that for every case of torture, there
will be at
least a hundred new terrorist recruits who sincerely believe the United States
to be satanic. So many pieces of detainee testimony were independently
verified
that they cannot all be fabrications. And it really doesn’t matter.
Anyone
hearing the stories (which are probably but not certainly true) and
sees the
photos (which are true) cannot help but draw the conclusion that, in
this instance,
American forces were oppressors.

In
conclusion,
the
leadership of the Republican Party has considered war
to be the
solution of choice for international conflicts. Worse than that, their
motivation is not to resolve the conflicts, but to make money while
pretending
to do so. The information provided above makes this conclusion
inescapable.
Moreover, when the Republicans were in complete power, they amassed
breathtaking deficit spending in order to get Iraqi oil fields and
government
contracts. Today, Republican leaders want you to forget that they did
this, as
they reinvent themselves—in total contrast to their recent record—as
fiscal
conservatives. If Republicans get another chance to lead the country,
they may
find it a lot harder this time to ask China to lend us the money
to start
more wars.

I
have
left
out a lot of important information. But the purpose of this
website
is to provide a brief summary of how the Republican leadership is
creating a
new climate of life on this planet—one that will, to the extent that
they can
create it, include never-ending wars for profit.